“Divine Order take charge of my life today and every day. All things work together for good for me today. This is a new and wonderful day for me - there will never be another one like this one. I am Divinely guided all day long, and whatever I do will prosper. Divine Love: enfold me, surround me, and enwrap me and I will go forth in peace. I am going to be a wonderful success in all of my undertaking today.”
I grew up in a neighborhood nearly identical to Cuesta Verde in the movie Poltergeist. And oddly enough, I grew up in a neighborhood 20 minutes away from Steven Spielberg’s childhood home.
David Furtney found the actual house from Poltergeist, in Cuesta Verde Simi Valley, California.
Meaning “Goat Sucker” in Spanish, the Chupacabra is a mysterious creature that haunts the American Southwest, Central America, and the Caribbean; according to reports, it has a penchant for drinking the blood of livestock.
Last week the town of Cuero, Texas got yet another “Chupacabra” visitation (Scientific American link):
Last year, Cuero resident Phylis Canion found a dead “Chupacabra” on her property [below left] - DNA testing of this specimen at UC Davis identified the maternal DNA of a Coyote (Canis latrans) and the paternal DNA of a Mexican Grey Wolf (Canis lupus baieyi), but the grey hairless appearance of the creature cannot be easily explained by either lineage (KVUE News link).
(left photo: Associated Press)
Blogadilla Mutant Research Facility Results:
The above two examples of “Chupacabra” look remarkably like a native Mexican breed of dog known as the Xoloitzcuintli (sho-lo-eetz-kwin-tlee) [above right]. This Precolombian Mesoamerican breed (known by the Aztecs and ancient Maya) is medium sized, most often hairless, and with skin ranging from pink to blue-grey to black. This breed still exists in northern Mexico and the American Southwest.
A feral population around the town of Cuero, Texas could have easily interbred with other wild canids - such as Coyotes and Mexican Grey Wolves - to produce these ugly Xoloitzcuintli mixes. The short front legs of the top example can be explained by any number of natural processes such as inbreeding, hybridization, natural variation, or poor interpretation of the video footage.
The Second Great Mystery of Cuero, Texas: This guy’s haircut.
C - The KII EMF Meter (with switch modification). $66.95 (or $44.95 unmodified), available through Ghost Augustine.
D - The TRI-Field Natural EMF Meter. Don’t let the name mislead you, it also works with supernatural EMF fields also. $207.99, available through Ghost TRHAPS.
E - The Baketan Ghost Detector 1.0. Strap it to your cellphone, it changes color to indicate the nature of the supernatural presence. Only $19.89, cute ghost charm included, available through Strapya-World.
F - The Baketan Ghost Detector 2.0. Small enough to strap to your cellphone, it changes color to indicate the nature of the supernatural presence, also includes new ‘ghost voice translator.” $19.12, available through Strapya-World.
My sister buys a home and has a party.
I buy her a glow-in-the-dark Ouija Board as a housewarming present (useful around the home, no?).
It went something like this:
(Scene: Seven drunk people in the darkened empty livingroom of an old farmhouse, around 12:00AM.)
Us: “Oh great Ouija, can you hear us?”
Ouija: “YES”
Us: “Oh great Ouija, who are we speaking to?
Ouija: “YES”
Us: “Ouija, what is Jacob’s mother’s middle name?”
Ouija: “M-J-A-Z-A-Z-8″
Us: “Ouija, is there anything you want to tell us?”
Ouija: “YES”
Us: “What do you want to tell us?”
Ouija: “J-R-I-3-I-4-C”
(End scene)
Some observations:
• Ouija Boards often communicate with the living through license plate numbers.
• Some Ouija Boards might need “calibration” - though I’m not sure how to do it.
• Perhaps Ouija Boards can be drunk. Or deaf. Or illiterate.
• When returning a Ouija Board to Toys-R-Us, don’t tell them that you think it’s defective and you’d like to exchange it for one with “stronger spiritual powers.”
Every year around the 4th of July, hundreds of eyewitness sightings of the elusive “Paul Revere” are reported. Also known as the “New England Sasquatch” and the “Colonial Skunk-Ape” - recent photographic evidence may offer the first substantial proof that this elusive creature is not the figment of the wild imaginations of shut-ins and hillbillies.
Our Blogadilla research team has acquired recent exclusive footage of this creature in its native habitat. The Paul Revere walks upright like a human being and has coloration which allows it to easily blend-in with its environment [Can you see it? Photos on the right enhanced for better viewing]. Our Blogadilla Heavy Industries research team suspects that this example is a female.
The pattern of recent disasters in China has had many superstitious people concerned about the Olympic Mascots (the Fuwa) - claiming that each of the five reflects/predicts a particular disaster. According to Reuters, Chinese censors have made efforts to remove posts about the Fuwa superstitions, struggling to keep the air of the upcoming Olympics at a rosy-fresh note.
Recently, the fifth and final Fuwa prophecy has been supposedly fulfilled.
Huanhuan - The Olympic Flame - (“The Bearer of Incendiary Strife”) Starting in March 2008, this Olympic Torch Relay may go down in history as one of the most protested and problematic.
Jingjing - The Giant Panda - (“The Lord of Angry Earth”) The panda patron of Sichuan Province has been associated with the disastrous 7.9 May 12th earthquake that occurred there, which left 69,000 dead and over a million stranded or homeless. The epicenter of the earthquake was near the Wulong Panda Research Center.
Yíngying - The Tibetan Antelope - (“The Creature of Righteous Unrest”) On March 10, 2008 - the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising Day - demonstrations began in China. By March 14th, destructive riots ensued in several regions of China.
Nini - The Swallow/Shayan Kite - (“The Bearer of Unfortunate Wind”) April 28, China Railway Train T195 crashed near the city of Zibo in Shandong Province, killing 72 people and injuring more than 420. The nearby city of Weifang has had a long association with Shayan kites.
Bèibei - The Chinese Sturgeon - (“The Bringer of Torrent and Flood”) Over the last month, flooding in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan Provinces has displaced thousands of people and over 1,000 people are missing or dead.
According to a recent study by the Dutch Center for Insurance Statistics, traffic accidents and incidents such as fire and theft actually occur slightly less on Friday the 13th (in the Netherlands).
“Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil” (Loren Bouchard, H. Jon Benjamin) - perhaps one of the funniest shows ever to air on [adult swim]. Already done with its first season, and perhaps already done with its last season - it looks like [adult swim] may not pick “Lucy” up for a second season. Perhaps because it is a little too controversial at times: DJ Jesus (the second coming) and his love interest Lucy (the Daughter of the Devil) live the 20-something hipster life with their friend Judas, while Lucy’s father makes regular attempts to overtake the world. Plus a never-ending supply of priest jokes.
The credits of “Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil” are funnier than an entire season of “Family Guy.”
And speaking of Indiana Jones - no home is safe from looters and grave robbers without the ancient Mesoamerican booby trap kit: one idol drops plastic spiders on unwary looters, the other shoots darts from its eyes.
Skyfish (also known as “rods” or “solar entities”) are a fairly recent cryptozoological phenomena - since the beginning of affordable video cameras. They appear as small semitransparent rods with ridged lateral membranes [top right and left photos, artist's reconstruction bottom left]. According to enthusiasts, they can only been seen through a video camera - they dart through the air at such a velocity that they are unseen by the naked human eye.
The reality: There is no record of anyone ever catching a skyfish, though a Chinese effort to catch them (in 2005) revealed ordinary flying insects. Given that all skyfish evidence comes from video footage - and first-hand observations from skyfish enthusiasts/idiots - the answers to the mystery are obvious: frame-rate, motion blur, birds, and insects. The combination of the slower frame-rate of most video cameras (50-60 fps) and the frequency of ‘wing-flap’ of insects and (small) birds in flight produces a blurred/elongated body with multiple wing-flap cycles within a single frame set. A similar effect can be seen in high speed footage of birds and insects in flight [bottom right photo].
How to Catch a Skyfish:
Bonus Round:
The stick used to catch skyfish is called a “spoodle.”
Papa Legba - Pops Staples / Talking Heads: 
